Useless Without You
by beyond-ye-pale
Summary: It's been 3,700 years since humanity was turned to stone. Taylor knows. She counted.
1. Prologue

Useless Without You (Worm Au/Dr. Stone Crossover)

Prologue

_Out of all the possible epiphanies she could have had in this moment_, Taylor thought, _the one she'd never have expected, not in ten million years, was that Emma would mean so little to her anymore._

It was a distant realization, barely audible in the back of her head over the cacophony of her heart pounding, her fists banging, and her classmates' malicious laughter. Her initial disorientation after having been shoved face-first into the mess in her locker had dispersed the moment she felt something _move, _And been replaced only with mounting terror and panic when her attempt to climb out was cut short by the clang of the door being slammed shut behind her.

Well, that and disgust, of course.

In truth, even after the bullying had petered out in the weeks before the break, the sting of betrayal at Emma's actions upon its dramatic return was pretty minor; What was once so devastating to her had become a cold, dull ache that never really went away, so familiar a sensation that it barely registered.

It wasn't surprising to her that Emma would make a return to form. The reprieve in her torment being just another hoax meant to break her spirit seemed so obvious in retrospect, that Taylor couldn't help the flash of recrimination and self-hatred that seared through her chest for falling for it, once again. Long gone were the days of crying herself to sleep, desperately wishing for her closest and dearest friend to come to her senses. The Emma of the present shared with the Emma of the past her face and little else. She'd gone to pieces in visceral chunks, and the bits that were lost had all been carelessly replaced with the flesh and soul of a monster. Birds fly, fish swim, and Emma hurts people. Such is the truth of her world these days.

More surprising, but not altogether too much, was that she'd escalate to something of this scope. Her aggressors thrived in the borderlands of obscurity and deniable accountability, while this latest attack would be testing the boundaries of both in short order. Still, Taylor's experiences so far called for an appropriate amount of cynicism in all things, and the bottomless font of power tapped by an innocent smile and a lawyer father had yet to be surmounted regardless of the offense. This would likely hold true even now.

The real surprise, Taylor noted distantly even as her voice grew hoarse and her breathing ragged, was the callousness shown by the rest of her peers. Abandoning her to her fate, an apathetic crowd was a sore point for her that came up a few times in the past, but for it to reach a level where her pleas of distress were met only with derision? That kind of malice from Emma was commonplace, but the weight of betrayal she felt from the faceless crowd in this moment outranked what she felt from Emma by an order of magnitude. It was as if her faith in the decency of humanity itself was being corroded away, second by painful second. Was no one really going to help her, even now? The bitterness towards the bystanders sought to consume her thoughts, leaving little room for consideration of the likes of _Emma_.

It was so overwhelming, in fact, that it was only when she ceased hammering on the sealed door of her makeshift prison, in order to rest her now burning muscles, that she noticed the jeers from beyond the slatted door of her locker had been turned into a deafening silence.

Had they actually left her here, and so quickly? Taylor's heart leapt to her throat and escaped her lips as a tremulous whimper at that horrifying thought. Any further introspection stamped out by the potential of being left to literally rot, she stopped all movement and strained her ears to their utmost, ignoring even the chilling sensation of various bugs skittering across lengths of skin, both exposed and not.

There was still an occasional murmur. It was too difficult to distinguish much from the voices at their current volume, and in her present state. Taylor was beginning to suspect that she was verging on a mix of hysteria and shock by this point. She could almost detect a note of confusion from the tones, or maybe fear? What was happening? Was someone finally going to let her out?

To help her?

Her fragile spark of hope was met only with a steadily growing humming noise, which was soon accompanied by a glow of sickly green light that filtered through the gaps and bathed the locker around her, before she was overtaken by complete darkness, and silence.

That day, all the humans around the world… turned to stone.


	2. Stone World 1-1

Useless Without You (Worm Au/Dr. Stone Crossover)

Stone World 1.1

Have you ever gone to bed at night so exhausted and desperate for some rest, the act of falling asleep feels like a relief even before you manage to pass out? Imagine feeling that, but in reverse, and you'd have an idea of what it was like to finally wake up after sleeping for who knows how long. It's a strange sensation, to actually get tired of resting. I wasn't really conscious enough to put that thought together just yet, but the unusual situation of trying to wake up and struggling to succeed? Hits just fine on an emotional level, if not a rational one. It was as if the me in my dreams was impatiently tapping her toes, waiting for my body to stop slacking off.

But if my mind was groggy and slow, than my body was molasses. Blinking the sleep out of my eyes was about all I could manage, while my brain sent messages to my limbs that just didn't seem to reach them. Small mercies that the morning sun, and it _was_ morning apparently, was angled away from my face.

Or _I_ was angled away from _it_, rather. C'mon brain, pull it together.

It finally did, after what felt like minutes but was probably only a few seconds, with a sudden snap into focus on weird thing number two.

"Why am I upside down?"

As disorienting as my waking up process had felt before, it had nothing on the sight of the world before me, completely inverted. The sun was peering over (under?) the horizon of the ocean to my left, the shore of which was only a couple hundred meters away from me at most. Close enough that I could hear the lapping of the waves on the sand. I was inside a small outcropping of rock, too shallow to be called a cave, which was keeping me in the shade and preventing the sunlight from searing out my freshly woken and increasingly grumpy and perplexed eyeballs. And perhaps most importantly, I appeared to be doing a headstand in a two-inch deep puddle of water.

This was not my bed.

Waking up in a place you don't recognize via events you don't remember is always a discomforting experience, no matter who you are or what the circumstance is. It would be a cause for alarm for me especially, for various reasons, in just about any other case. A headstand, though? My emotions were competing for dominance, and incredulousness was apparently doping. It had so much of a lead, in fact, that I must have stayed like that for whole minute more, just baffling at the reality that was staring me in the face, despite all logic fruitlessly denying it as possible. I can't even do a headstand.

Unfortunately, gravity waits for no girl, and my blue-screen moment was interrupted by an ominous cracking noise coming from my body above me. I flinched as a sudden rain of debris splashed into the puddle around my head, followed shortly by the rest of me. It was at this point I was rudely introduced to the fact I was naked, on account of the water being ice fucking cold.

The immediate future was filled with me dancing around like an idiot, and switching between making the unmistakable noises associated with your hot water running out in the middle of your shower and swearing vehemently. Eventually, though, the diatribe wore down enough for me to look myself and my surroundings over properly. (I kept hopping back and forth on my toes, though. The rocky ground wasn't all that much warmer, or dryer.)

In the puddle, and amazingly somehow still on a few parts of me despite my flailing, were various sized shards of some kind of stone shell. Experimentally, I peeled at one of the few fragments stuck to my side, and it came right off without issue. The stone was cool and not too overly rough, and followed the contours of my skin completely. Had I been entirely encased in this stuff before? Was that how I had been effortlessly balanced on my head?

Okay, there were way too many mysterious things going on right now. My boundless curiosity was being pulled in every direction, and I didn't even know where to start. Idly, I finished peeling the extra bits of stone off and peered down into the now still, reflective pool of water I had been splashing about in before.

Ugh, I looked like a drowned cat. Running a hand through my dripping, blond hair shook loose the few last bits of stone particles caught up in it, but didn't do much for drying it out. My freckles stood out in stark relief against my paled skin from the cold. Oddly, a thin black streak ran down from my left inner eye like a crack, before curling in towards itself and disappearing. Huh, that was new. It was faintly reminiscent of the Eye of Horus I wore on the front of my costume. It was kind of cute, actually. Idly scratching at it revealed it to be a part of my face, rather than a smear of dirt or something.

Looking at my reflection also served as a pretty blatant reminder that I was completely naked and outside, as if the cold wasn't enough. Even if there didn't seem to be anyone else around, I didn't want to have to stay like this any longer than necessary. Cautiously, I snuck a peek around the edges of the outcrop.

Good news? No people. I could dash for it if I had to. Bad news? Wilderness, as far as the eye could see. Really, _really_ lush wilderness, too. My brain was beginning to assemble a complete picture that I didn't much like the look of.

Regardless, I was going to need to start heading inland. The cold incoming winds of the ocean were not doing me any favors, and I had no interest in catching a cold or getting hypothermia in the middle of nowhere, away from any sort of medicine or healthcare professional. Clothes were priority number one.

I tread quickly but carefully out into the world towards the tree line, urged on out of embarrassment but refusing to rush in case I stepped on something sharp with my bare feet. I could twist some grass, leaves, and various other odds and ends into something resembling clothing. It'd be more to protect my modesty than my body heat in all honesty, but still better than nothing. I stopped short once I got there, though. All my previous plans and ideas fled my mind in an instant at the sight before me.

I wasn't as alone as I thought.

There hadn't been any to see back on the beach, but up here? Scattered throughout the trees, some partially buried in the ground, were stone statues. People, arrayed in various unusual poses.

Like I had presumably been.

Suppressing a shudder and shutting down that line of thinking _hard_, I grabbed a handful of greenery and started experimenting and practicing before actually trying to make something worthwhile. I'd never really been the crafty sort, but thankfully my power was able to point out the mistakes and offer some tips during my trial and error. For whatever reason, it was being really cooperative with me. I didn't have to jerk the leash to get it back on topic, and there were no signs of any building headaches even as I continued to use it. I wasn't about to complain. The pinpoint focus helped me ignore the stone elephants in the room (the one over there was broken in half jesus fuck) enough to keep my shaking hands relatively steady.

By the time I felt confident enough to start actually putting some clothing together, I had gotten up and moved closer inland a few times as I practiced, trying to get further and further away from the chill of the shore without losing my bearing. By this point, I couldn't even see it any more through the dense underbrush. The sun was still visible, though, so I knew the ocean was still to the east. I'd been collecting the really good materials as I went, too. I couldn't carry too much, but for a single set of clothes, I didn't need to. It was getting harder to ignore the bits and pieces of macabre horticulture I had to pass more often the deeper I went, though. I was shivering, and I wasn't sure if it was from the cold, or the dread.

On one hand, it was obvious that whatever had happened to these people happened a long time ago. The ones that were buried had no signs of disturbed earth around them, and were even growing grass and moss in various places. I wasn't likely to be in danger from it now. On the other hand, just how long had they been like that? How long had I? I'd thought I had ended up someplace remote back at the beach, but the niggling doubt in the back of my mind was telling me I hadn't gone anywhere at all. This was still Brockton Bay.

Could it have been a villain attack? Some new S-Class threat, or a fresh Trigger? A new Endbringer, even? Whatever had happened, the result was that all these people had been left carelessly out in the open, at the mercy of the elements and the ravages of time. No one had come to help them, or clean up. Based on some of the positions I'd seen bodies in, the effect had occurred in an instant, with no chance to react; hands grasped nonexistent silverware, or stuck out in front of them mid-gesture. It nauseatingly reminded me of victims uncovered in the aftermath of volcano eruptions, forever preserved in time by the pyroclastic flow.

"Whatever it is," I said to myself out loud, mostly just to break up the unsettling quiet, "It's not a priority for me right now." Shaking myself out of the uneasy contemplative mood I'd put myself in while mindlessly weaving tall grass together, I gave my finished work a good once-over, before tying it around my waist and shoulders. A bit scratchy and tight in some spots (I didn't want it to fall off if I had to move around a lot) but ultimately functional. As I predicted, it didn't do much for me temperature-wise, but the sun had begun warming me up enough even through the shade of the trees that it was a non-issue for now. I'd even had enough material left to put together a shabby shoulder-bag. That would help a lot with this next part.

Food, and fire.

I was warm enough for now, but I would need a fire to keep it that way during the night. Food wasn't all that difficult to identify thanks to my power, but some of it would need to be cooked if I was going to choke it down. I'd never really considered myself a food snob, but I'm still a city girl, with the taste buds to match. I'd collect some firewood and food as I continued on.

I didn't really have a destination in mind, but if this really is Brockton Bay, than I had a general idea of where I was right now, thanks to the coastline. If I kept heading to the east, I should be able to make my way to where the Undersiders' base is. Or rather was, I supposed? I hadn't really known them for long enough to consider them friends, and it wasn't like I knew how to wake them up anyway, but it was basically all that I had. This was not a depressing thought at all. Really. Stay positive, Lisa! That means Coil's out of the picture, too, the slimy fucker. Knowing him, he would have been in his shitty underground lair at the time of the attack, too. Good luck finding someone to dig your sorry ass out. You can pay them in stone-bucks.

Not exactly the climactic victory over him that I wanted, but all things considered, I'd take it.

Despite my intuition, however, the further I walked the less sure I became of my plan. I was getting plenty of berries, nuts, and mushrooms to eat, and had picked up the kind of kindling I would need to get a fire started, but that was the end of the good news. Checking the statues I passed as I went was morose and fruitless. No sign of the Undersiders. Sometimes it would be a person whose face I vaguely recognized, in a 'I've seen them before' kind of way, but that offered me nothing besides melancholy. People were too thoroughly scattered to place them on the map in a consistent manner, even if I could guess where they might have been before they turned to stone. There had probably been some flooding in between now and way back when that shuffled them around. It would explain some of the more damaged statues.

By the time the sun had begun to set, I had settled down in a clearing with hurting feet and a sunken heart. Judging by the distance I had walked to get here, if the Undersiders had been this way, I would have surely passed them by already. The reality of having nothing to do even if I had found them had really begun to set in, too. What was I going to do with myself? Even back when I had been pickpocketing on the street to survive, I hadn't felt as alone as I did now. Being forcefully recruited by Coil had sucked, but in a way, my drive to get back at him for that and take everything he owned was all I'd had going for me. I really didn't want to go back to living on the streets, and in the wilderness alone was basically worse in every way.

Could I walk all the way to Boston? Brockton Bay was looking unsalvageable and completely abandoned at this point. But what if it didn't stop there? Would Boston even be better? Just how far would I have to go to find living people again?

Breathing out what felt like the fifth sigh in so many minutes, I started putting together a campfire in the center of the clearing. It was slow going. Even with all my supplies, and my power telling me what to do, my muscles were weary. Even basic movements took more effort than I wanted to use. Surprisingly, my head was still fine. I'd been using my power all day, yet it still felt as fresh as it did first thing this morning. I didn't even know where to begin with that, but I was afraid to think about it too hard, in cased I ended up jinxing myself.

Actually starting the fire ended up being the hardest part, but I finally managed it with a stick and some makeshift rope. As the smoke started to creep up into the twilight sky, I set some food on skewers as if I was camping, huffed out a tired breath, and lay back on the ground, just resting.

I stayed like that for a while, until the smell of food roused me enough to remove it from the fire. It wasn't particularly tasty, but I was so hungry by that point that I'd eat anything. The handfuls I'd been snacking on as I traveled had done little to sate my appetite, even without the extra energy my impromptu exercise burned through. Having finished my meal rather quickly, I throw some more kindling onto the cracking fire and built it up, making the most of the light and heat. I lay back down, staring into the dark, now that the sun has finally set.

Stars.

More stars than I'd ever seen in my life, even in pictures. The sky was so vibrantly full of them, that the skyline of the ground was silhouetted against it in comparison.

_It's pretty_, I thought distantly, too tired to even pick at the new mystery sprouting in my head. There've been too many of those today.

I hadn't even closed my eyes for more than a minute before a shuffling sound had them snapping back open. I pulled myself up to my protesting feet and stared harshly out into the darkness. It was a mostly futile effort of course. The light of the fire to my back didn't reach very far out, and the dark was _dark_. My sudden movement had been enough to startle whatever had been creeping up on me, though, and I caught a brief glimpse of a glowing eye as it caught the light. Based on the position relative to the ground, I was probably dealing with a dog or something.

Which was bad, because that meant there was likely more than one.

It hadn't even really occurred to me, since I was so distracted by, well, everything else. Of course there were dangerous wild animals about. I'd seen plenty of birds and the occasional squirrel. Whatever had happened to the humans didn't seem to have affected anything else. It was a bit surprising that they'd been attracted to the smell of my food cooking though. It wasn't like I had any meat. Now was not the time to be critical of that, though.

I grabbed an unused branch from my frighteningly diminished pile and lit the end of it up in the fire, before wheeling around and brandishing it in front of me. Like a torch or a weapon, I wasn't sure. The new light source confirmed I was dealing with at least two dogs, as they yipped and jumped away, before going back to circling. The adrenaline was keeping me going now, but my muscles had already been flagging before they showed up. If they got bold and decided to attack despite my fire, I was basically done for.

To be fair, as a squishy teenage girl Thinker, there wasn't a whole lot I could do in this situation anyway.

In the end, they didn't even get the chance to make that decision. An ominous buzzing noise filled the air, starting low but building to a worrying crescendo that sent the pack scrabbling and whining back the way I'd come with their tails between their legs. I spun around, looking around the ground and sky for the source of it, but even before my fear could jump from my previous problem to the next, the sound died back down, leaving me all alone again, with only my thoughts.

I stayed rooted to the spot, my heart racing, for what felt like an eternity. Whatever had made the noise didn't come back. Eventually I calmed down enough to notice the flaming branch in my hand was starting to burn down a little too closely, so I threw it into the fire. I hesitated for a moment, but ultimately my curiosity was piqued yet again, and I turned around to my pile for a second torch. I wasn't going to go very far, not out of sight of my fire. But I did want to check out what was just a little further to the west of where my campsite was, if only so I could sleep a little more comfortably.

The previously near-empty stack of wood was completely refilled. Next to it, a crudely drawn arrow was scratched into the dirt, alongside what looked like a stick figure.


	3. Stone World 1-2

Useless Without You (Worm Au/Dr. Stone Crossover)

Stone World 1.2

I was starting to regret letting my impatience get the best of me by leaving so early in the day. The morning dew was chilly underneath my bare feet as I trudged through the softly lit forest, and the moisture was becoming unpleasantly sticky. It had been nice when I needed to collect some water for my parched throat, rather than head back towards the nearest stream I'd passed the day before, but I hadn't been expecting to walk as far as I was.

The arrow in the dirt had pointed to the west, but once I had hit the edge of the clearing, more detailed instructions were tagged into various tree trunks as I went, leaving an easily seen trail of connect-the-dots that started to veer to the south. I'd already been walking for about half an hour. Wherever I was being led was apparently not as nearby as I'd expected, and whoever had saved me must have been moving around in the dark before they found me, and made these instructions afterwards. I couldn't imagine how they did so without any light, or why they'd been walking around at night in the first place.

I hoped I wasn't being led into a trap, but I was desperate. My food from yesterday was already gone, and I had no means of carrying water with me. Also, I was getting pretty lonely. They'd been thoughtful enough to gather firewood for me, which all things considered was a gesture that made me cautiously optimistic. If they meant me any harm, then last night would have been a perfect opportunity for them, rather than going through all this effort. I'd have to wait until I could get a good look at them with my power before I made any real calls, though.

The tittering of the morning birds only picked up the further into the woods I trekked. My power helpfully pointed out it wasn't just their volume increasing, but the number of birds in the area was increasing, too. Not just birds, either, but various kinds of bugs milled about. She could see birds swooping between the trees, snapping them up out of the air. Not only that, but they were big. Both the bugs and the birds. Not alarmingly so, but noticeably enough, even at a distance.

I was slightly out of breath by the time I reached the top of the next hill, but what it revealed still made me gasp.

Before me was a wide-open expanse, possibly a mile across, dug down into the earth. Crudely made dirt and stone walking paths snaked in between areas of cultivated gardens of various lush plant life, from towering trees to berry bushes and flowers. Simple dusty buildings were scattered around, and appeared to have been carved whole from the ground down, with circular holes for windows and doorways covered either with swatches of tree bark or some kind of discolored cloth. Not square shaped, but more like mounds of earth. Some were wrapped inside the roots of even larger trees, both supporting them and being supported in turn. One of the more pronounced buildings near the center even had what appeared to be a makeshift chimney through its roof, though there was no smoke at the moment. Nearby sat what was clearly meant to be a well. Other pathways near the edges led to doorways carved into the sides of the earthy walls, seemingly leading away to parts that were still underground.

It was the makings of a primitive village, reminiscent of the pictures I'd seen of old civilizations like the cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde, only dug into downwards instead of from the side. After walking through nothing but wilderness for over a day, the sheer scale of it was breathtaking.

I stood there at the edge of the threshold, my eyes sweeping over the new land before me. I had expected a campsite at most, maybe a shack. Either that, or some kind of outpost connected to society at large beyond the entombed city. (I wasn't that optimistic, though.) This was something that went far beyond my imagination.

My first step onto the path was hesitant. Tentative. Still, I wasn't about to turn around and leave behind what I walked all this way to find in the first place, just because I was feeling a little intimidated. If I was going to survive in this world, whatever was going on, I would need to be assertive. Each step after the first got easier and easier, and I began making my way down the slope into the village's depths. My progress was slow, as my head pivoted on my neck, giving my power as much to work with as I could.

Despite its size, I couldn't see any people around. I couldn't find any real signs of people having been here, either. No dropped items or discarded trash lay in the walkways. No packed imprints of foot traffic in the dirt. The cries of the birds in the trees overhead, along with the rustling of leaves from the slight breeze, gave the immediate vicinity a modest air of energy, but that was all. No less still than the forest had been. I couldn't detect any voices or movement.

Where was everyone? A mile-wide village may be peanuts compared to the city I was used to, but that didn't mean it was small. Construction alone would have required a lot of manpower, even as simple as most of the buildings were. It probably wasn't a case of the residents just being elsewhere at the moment, either. Everything was too… untouched. It was almost as if it had sprouted up naturally, on its own.

I stepped off the path a bit to inspect the nearest building. The wall was composed entirely of packed dirt and stone, and maybe some clay. It ran flush into the ground seamlessly, as well as the other walls at the corners. Peering inside the window of one of the dirt mounds, all I could see were stacks of supplies. Stretches of unused bark, rolls of that same yellowish-gray cloth, and piles of tinder dominated the floor everywhere except right in front of the doorway. No sign of anyone living there, although I guessed someone had to be living somewhere around here, for them to be collecting supplies. The next hovel I checked was much the same, though mostly empty.

I blew out a breath through puffed cheeks. Disappointing.

The third one wasn't, but it was also pretty alarming. I squawked and scrambled back away from the window until my back was against a wall on the other side of the path.

It was a much smaller hole I peered through, and the lighting inside was pretty bad. I couldn't make out a whole lot. But from I could see the whole room was filled from top to bottom with spider webs. And spiders. Maybe thousands of them, lazily skittering to and fro across the strands hanging between walls.

A quick, slightly panicky check followed by an equally hasty retreat showed the one I was leaning against was similar, but with beehives and bees.

Okay, so there were a ton of bugs here. That… wasn't terrible news, actually. I wasn't particularly afraid of bugs, not more so than your average person. It was just the amount that was so off-putting. Insects could produce a lot of helpful by-products, though, and whoever had built this place was likely keeping them for that exact reason. Things like beeswax and honey would be really nice to have. Thinking about it, those lengths of cloth draped over doorways might have been silk, too. Spider-silk, probably? So long as they had some way to weave it. I glanced down at my attempt at clothing, which was already looking kind of tattered.

Oh, man. That would be really, really nice.

Looking back up at the dirt mounds, I could see a pattern starting to develop. There were primarily two types of building. The mounds with smaller windows and openings were more habitats than living spaces. People-buildings were blockier and more defined. To check, I snuck a quick peek into one more of each. Sure enough, the blocky one had some small, basic looking covered bowls that were probably used to hold either water or preserve food, and the dumpy-looking one had rows of what looked like naturally built ant farms.

This was a stupid amount of bugs.

I had never heard of a cape in Brockton Bay with any sort of bug-related powers. If there was one, I probably would have, too. Parahumans tended to need to flex their powers one way or another, and someone running around unleashing plagues of swarming death on their enemies would not have been subtle. Still, I was guessing it had to be some kind of bug power. I couldn't think of any really useful by-product made by ants off the top of my head, but if they were being used to help farm with the plants outside, or construct the buildings out of mud, that was another story. Also, while the makeshift building may provide protective shelter for the bugs, they weren't exactly great for keeping them contained. Letting bees, spiders, and ants have free reign in the middle of your living area was a problem in most circumstances.

Even now, with me sticking my face in the windows, the various assortments of bugs were completely calm. No aggressive actions, or attempts to flee out of the numerous escape routes. The bees hadn't even raised an obligatory warning buzz.

I turned around and returned to the dirt path. So, it was either a new cape with bug powers, or someone not local. The former was certainly believable. Triggering over being stranded alone in the wilderness wasn't unlikely, especially after the whole 'being turned to stone and missing the complete decay of civilization' part. But, one way or the other, I was going into this blind. Maybe I should check the center of the village? I'd been pointed in this direction presumably for a reason, so they had to be somewhere. If their power worked at a significant range, than the center would be as good a place to look as any.

Picking up the pace, I headed towards the building with the chimney, located roughly central to the rest of the sunken zone. Out of all them, it was the most defined. Actual wood was used as roofing, instead of just being a rounded edge of dirt. Separate bits of cloth hung over the window, like curtains, instead of the lazier tarp-like additions she'd seen previously. The door actually had a grip to open it, as well as what seemed to be rudimentaryhinges. As I stood a bit tensely before it, I could faintly smell the scent of cooked meat. I could feel myself starting to salivate.

Should… should I _knock_?

As it turned out, I didn't need to. Gently, a handful of butterflies flitted into view and landed on the door, making another small arrow that pointed towards my left. They waited like that for a few seconds, and then flew off in the direction they'd indicated.

Well, that answers that.

I walked around the edge of the house and followed the butterflies over to a shaded garden area underneath a huge tree. The sunlight came down in filtered beams through the leaves, and it took me a few seconds to make out what I was looking at through the broken shapes of the cast shadows.

Sitting in the grass and leaning against the tree, or really more slumped against it, was a person. A girl?

Feet jutted out in front of her wrapped in what seemed to be deerskin, and her legs disappeared underneath a large shawl or cloak made of the now recognizable silk, so large on her she was swimming in it. Her face was likewise difficult to spot, through the mess of dark hair that completely obscured her eyes and ran halfway down her shoulders in thick, curly strands. Visible only from the nose down, her wide, expressionless mouth was made to seem even wider by the thin cracks that started at the edges of her lips and climbed upwards and outwards to her cheekbones and ears, giving the vague impression of mandibles.

One of the butterflies perched on top of her head, while the rest settled into her upturned hands resting in her lap. Next to her in the grass sat a straw woven basket filled with various odds and ends, A large bowl of water with smaller ones that were likely meant to be cups, and two plate-sized slabs of wood covered in large chunks of cooked deer meat.

As I gaped, a steady stream of bugs crawled and landed on the trunk of the tree above her head, climbing over one another until they had pulled themselves into formation. With their bodies, they spelled out a greeting.

"_Hello._"


	4. Stone World 1-3

Useless Without You (Worm Au/Dr. Stone Crossover)

Stone World 1.3

The silence stretched out between us after her unusual greeting, with only the quiet chittering of the bugs filling the air.

I felt like I had stepped into the middle of a fairy tale, ever since I had woken up for the first time back on that beach. There I was, stumbling about in the middle of nowhere with only the natural land to aid or hinder me, surrounded by the unmoving, ominously petrified forms of every other human being in the city. Beset by dangerous beasts, I was then spontaneously saved from certain doom by a mysterious stranger, who then led me to an equally mysterious but quaint home in the forest with their woodland creatures, and offered me breakfast. It was the sort of thing you'd never expect to be a part of in real life, and the atmosphere was all the more overpowering for it.

Hopefully I was only Alice in Wonderland, and not Hansel or Gretel.

There was a certain mindset you had to develop to be successful as a parahuman, in my experience. You had to learn to expect the unexpected. With powers that could make common sense go cry in the corner, nothing was every truly impossible, only improbable. Capes that were too easily caught off guard either ended up adjusting to it over time or were pushed out of the game.

One way or the other.

I hadn't been a cape for very long, but I could cheat. My power tended to suck the uncertainty and magic out of whatever I encountered, giving me answers before feelings of confusion or wonder even had time to settle in. It made adjusting and improvising in unexpected situations on the fly pretty easy. It was also kind of irritating, for a lot of reasons.

For one, waiting for other people to catch up to what was obvious for me made me restless, which had a tendency to make me snappier than others were willing to put up with. I could understand why, but knowing what was happening didn't do anything for fixing the issue, which just made me even less personable. I began every puzzle game with half of the picture already put together, and each successful addition I made would start a chain reaction until it eventually completed itself. After that, it was just a matter of sitting on my hands as patiently as I could while everyone else assembled their version manually, piece by monotonous piece. Anyone would feel tempted in that kind of situation to just finish it for them, you know? It wasn't just me.

As a result, mysteries that I had to actually work to solve were a treasured privilege for me. They were a reprieve from the undertone of impatience that had come to dominate nearly every aspect of my life, and they forced me to live in the present at normal speed, instead of skipping ahead. It was a big part of why I had trouble keeping my nose out of interesting things, even for my own good. I sniffed out brainteasers like boars sniffed out truffles, and with pretty similar motivations.

Waking up alone after being turned to stone, into a world abandoned to the passage of time for no discernible reason, was the biggest puzzle I'd ever seen. Every new bit of info just confused me more, instead of less. I hadn't even found the _edge pieces_, yet. The only thing keeping it from being the most fun I'd had since before I could remember was that focusing on it was also the only thing keeping me from breaking down over how scary my situation was; how _real_ it was. When I was afraid for my life last night, it had been more real than ever.

But here and now? Nothing felt real at all. This enigma of a girl in front of me emanated such a surreal feeling of serenity that for a moment…

I could just about believe in magic again, for the first time since I got my power.

Which is why the first words blurted out by my traitorous mouth, after what was in retrospect a pretty awkward silence, were these.

"Are you a Disney princess, or something?"

Okay, I'm ready to go back to being stone now, please.

Ugh. Alright, so look. It's been a really emotionally draining couple of days, cut me some slack. Even the most socially competent person may have trouble filtering their words after going through what I've just gone through. Being able to tell the difference between fiction and reality? Absolutely a learned skill, I swear. If I wasn't at least a little mad, I wouldn't have come here.

Once again, it was damage control time for me. I plastered on a smirk to give the impression I was intentionally cracking a joke, although based on how strained it felt, it probably wasn't very effective. My cheeks were definitely starting to color out of embarrassment, too. Damnit.

I still couldn't see her eyes, but I imagined if I could have, I would have seen her blink. Maybe. She wasn't giving me a whole lot of body language to work with. Practically none, even. If I hadn't been so eager to push past what just happened, I might have even kept the silence going just to try and check if she was actually breathing. Instead, I took a seat in the grass across from her as casually as possible, and after a moment of hesitation, picked up the wooden plate when she made no protest.

"Right, so uh… thanks. For this. And for protecting me, last night? My name's Lisa. Nice to meet you." My words jumbled up to start with, but slowly became more composed as I caught my stride. She didn't physically respond in any discernable way, but the bugs positioned on the tree above her head began rearranging into a new pattern.

"_I'm Taylor." _Short and to the point, but she was noticeably limited on writing space, and seemed to be using the bare minimum of bugs, which was something I was appreciative of. Especially since we were going to start eating. I'd probably have to get over that sort of thing now, I noted to myself. This conversation would be a lot easier and a lot less awkward if she'd just talk to me, but I wasn't about to start prodding her for personal details immediately after meeting her. My first impression was already struggling to keep afloat as it was.

Still, her two-and-a-half word answer didn't give me any help with getting this conversation going. I picked up and fiddled with what looked like an attempt at a fork and knife fashioned from wood and stone respectively while I thought about what to say. In the end, my pondering lasted long enough for me to cut off a chunk of meat, which meant at that point I may as well take a bite and keep thinking while chewing. Procrastination, to the rescue.

As I did, I felt my eyes widen involuntarily. It was surprising how good it was. I had been expecting to rely on my empty stomach to convince me to choke it down, but instead I could tell effort had been put into cooking it all the way through without burning the outsides, and there were even traces of a fruity flavor added from what I presumed was berries rubbed onto it before it was cooked, maybe even marinated in it. Oh, and actual salt.

At this rate, I was going to end up spoiled.

I looked up from my meal to compliment her cooking, because there was no way I could mess up that as a conversation piece, only to see she still hadn't moved at all. Her food was still untouched.

_If the first bit of good food I'm eating in two days, _I thought suspiciously while side-eyeing the bug girl and still chewing my second bite,_ is ruined because it was poisoned, I'm going to be pissed_.

I wasn't really all too worried. Poisoned food wouldn't have been handled with so much effort or so many valuable resources like salt.

"Aren't you going to eat yours?" I finally asked, after having finished my mouthful. "It's great, by the way. Seriously, thanks." Well, so much for not poking at potentially personal stuff. That didn't last me long. Still, her complete motionlessness was getting kind of unnerving, and doing absolutely nothing for my conversation skills. If there's one thing cold reading has shown me, it's that body language is half of the conversation by itself, whether you have superpowers to analyze it with or not.

"_Yeah_," was spelled out next, which lasted only a few seconds before becoming "_hold on_."

What happened next was difficult to find words to describe.

At first, nothing seemed to be going on. Then, a twitch. Easily missed for someone without my observational acumen, but clear as day to me. Then another. Slowly but surely, her still, limp body began rousing itself almost one muscle at a time. I felt like I was watching a corpse reanimate in slow motion. Life was _pouring_ back into her, manifesting as the little unconscious tells that were so blatantly absent to me before building up until they started to become conscious movements of extremities, like her fingers and feet. Her lips twitched, and her slightly slack jaw pulled back together. Her lungs pooled with air with a long, extended inhale before visibly deflating again as she let her breathe out. Her posture straightened in increments, until she was leaning forward instead of back. Finally, her slowly raising arms picked up enough speed to feel natural as she reached for her own set of tableware. Her eyes were visible now, and I could see that they were closed.

It was simultaneously one of the most interesting and horrifying things I had ever seen.

I very, very carefully set my fork and knife down on my plate (I was going to need to wait for my appetite to come back after that) and just gawked, as she began clumsily picking at her meal.

What.

What was _that_?

Her bugs started to shift again to spell out new words. I was fairly certain I hadn't asked that out loud even with my faulty filter, but the look on my face was probably obvious enough.

"_It's a power thing._"

Well, I had guessed that much. I looked down from the words back at her, and immediately felt relief. Her face was still mostly expressionless, but I could absolutely read her body language now. She seemed to be pretty sheepish, maybe a bit embarrassed and shy. Almost as awkward as I felt, which was comforting in its own way. I was heading back into familiar territory now.

"Hey, no worries. A lot of powers do weird things like that. I was mostly just worried about how still you were being. So long as you're okay, its fine," I reassured. She seemed to relax at that, which was exactly the reaction I was going for. Success.

"_Thank you_," she replied. The words melded together again to become, "_How long have_," and another switch up to, "_you been up_?" She could still talk while eating, but I needed a second to swallow my food before responding.

"Oh, I only woke up yesterday, down by the beach. You caught me at the perfect time, it was really lucky." I shot her an easy smile. Her movements seemed to stutter for a second when I said so, but I couldn't guess why. It was gone again before I could try and make more out of it.

"_Very lucky that_,"… "_You walked this_"… "_direction, in range_."

"Yeah, I guess so, huh." It really had been. If I'd gone in any other direction, I might not have run into those dogs, but if I had, that would have been it for me without Taylor to save my butt. Apparently I had stumbled close by enough that she'd presumably seen me with her bugs. I could only guess that's how she was seeing things, of course. Her eyes hadn't opened up once.

I was afraid to ask my next question, but I couldn't put it off forever. What would I have found, if I'd wandered elsewhere? Or rather, what wouldn't I have found?

I decided to bite the bullet.

"How about you? How long have you been working on this place? Have you seen anyone else up yet?" My voice cracked a little on that last bit despite my attempt at phrasing it lightheartedly, but overall I was proud of how well I held it together.

Taylor's bugs were quiet for once, and much too still, even as her body kept moving. Her stature was heavy. We kept eating in silence for a bit, after that.

"_Started walking_,"…"_three months ago_." She paused again after that, visibly struggling with how to say the next part. I felt bad about bringing it up and putting her on the spot like this, but I desperately needed to know, even if by this point I could tell it wasn't what I wanted to hear.

I could never have prepared for what her answer actually was, though.

"_But I haven't_,"… "_seen anyone for_," … "_3,700 years_."


End file.
